As Congress prepares its return to the capital, I think the item at the top of the agenda for most Members will be protecting jobs — their own. So I expect them to duck the promised, sincere effort to enact a cap-and-trade energy-rationing scheme.

So it is that we see in today’s media reports how the usual suspects have returned to shrieking “ExxonMobil!” and “Big Oil!”

That of course is the climate-industrial complex’s telltale sign that it has no arguments that anyone is buying, and so they resort to hysteria.

My guess: it’s too late, gang. The public tuned in, and are too aware now to give much credence to, let alone sheepishly nod at, these same old tired tactics. In fact, I’d guess that such lazy and cynical efforts to change the subject might even further rile the public.

Maybe. We’ll see. I’d prefer another flameout on the Senate floor to salt the political earth from whence cap-and-trade springs, at least for the foreseeable future. But my instinct tells me the administration will settle for Senate committee votes as their gesture to take to Copenhagen to wave around in one hand while fanning themselves with Waxman-Markey in the other. Equally likely is Senate passage of some “energy” porkulus with no whiff of cap-and-trade, which the administration will use as the basis for some tiresome lecture about Congress’ procedures of “conferencing” related bills and who knows what they’ll’ come up with!, etc.

What I do not see happening is the rumored scenario in which the Senate — too timid to take the issue on forthrightly — actually tries to “conference in” the biggest regulatory intervention in history by sneaking a cap-and-trade bill into what would otherwise have been just another “energy bill” sop to special interests — then trying to get a vote on the floor with limited debate on this backdoor measure. The House is run by radicals spoiling for a fight. They got one, but in doing so challenged the Senate Dems to put up their dukes, as well — and Majority Leader Harry Reid sees Tom Daschle in the mirror right about now.

No. I suspect that the Bayhs, Lambert-Lincolns, Nelsons (the Nebraska one — that fellow from Florida who says he could see global warming from space is too much of a project), and Landrieus of the world are telling Reid that he probably just doesn’t want to have the vote — previous promises to the House to “not BTU you” notwithstanding. But with this hyper-partisan crowd — which, in the face of a public revolt, has proven to include some of the tinniest ears in Congressional history – anything’s possible.